[wvns] Neuwirth loses lawsuit against Silverstein

Neuwirth loses lawsuit against Silverstein
Joachim Martillo
eaazi.blogspot.com

Richard Silverstein describes his victory via anti-SLAPP motion in
Rachel Neuwirth's libel lawsuit against him at
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2007/11/28/neuwirth-loses-libel-case-against-tikun-olam/

Silverstein states the following.

We won the case with an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against
Public Participation) motion under which the defendant must prove that
his speech was made in a public arena and furthered a public good and
that the plaintiff was a public figure. Rachel's key defense was that
she is a private figure (she argued that she was merely a real estate
agent) and the my blog was a private forum (because I "controlled"
it), all of which are patently false since she herself calls herself
an "internationally respected journalist" in her online bio. That my
blog is a public forum is also patently obvious as 250,000 unique
visitors each year indicate. And I no more 'control' the 6,000
comments published on my blog than I control the entire web.

Here is Neuwirth's biographical description from Rachel Neuwirth -
Guest Contributor to OpEds.com.

Rachel Neuwirth

Rachel Neuwirth, an internationally recognized, political
commentator and analyst. She specializes in Middle Eastern Affairs
with particular emphasis on Militant Islam and Israeli foreign policy.
She has been published in prominent news papers of Europe, Asia and
the US. She is frequently quoted by reputable Media. Conversant in
Arabic and French.

rachterry @ sbcglobal.net

From IsraPundit we learn the following.

Rachel Neuwirth is a Los Angeles-based analyst associated with the
American Jewish Congress and Stand With Us.

She seems to be a public figure to me.

The organizations with which she is associated are active and powerful
political players.

From http://www.forward.com/forward-50/

Charles Jacobs and Roz Rothstein

When it comes to defending Israel in the media, on campus and in
the streets, America's long-established Jewish groups no longer have a
monopoly. Increasingly, the agenda is set by scrappy startups like
Boston's The David Project and the Los Angeles-based StandWithUs ―
often dragging the rest of the community along behind them.
StandWithUs was founded in 2001 by a group of activists assembled by
Roz Rothstein, a family therapist driven by what she saw as the larger
community's anemic response to growing anti-Israel activism. The David
Project was launched the following year by Charles Jacobs, co-founder
of the American Anti-Slavery Group, which targeted slavery in Sudan.
Neither Rothstein, 55, nor Jacobs, 63, shies from confrontation. The
David Project captured headlines in 2003 with a documentary alleging
faculty intimidation of pro-Israel students at Columbia University.
More recently, it waged a high-profile legal and media battle with the
Islamic Society of Boston over its controversial associates and its
plans for a new mosque. This summer, StandWithUs took the lead in
responding to a planned pro-Palestinian rally in Washington. While the
D.C. Jewish Community Relations Council opted to ignore the
demonstration (which was a dud in the end), StandWithUs organized a
counter-protest and answered pro-Palestinian ads on Washington's
subway system with ads of its own. Both groups have focused on campus
activism, multimedia projects, leadership training and curriculum
development. The courses Rothstein and Jacobs charted have proven
popular with action-hungry donors: Their two startups already boast
multimillion-dollar budgets and sizable staffs.

The true name of StandWithUs is the Israel Emergency Alliance, which
is LA based. Its FIN is 01-566033, and its public filings are
available on line at GuideStar - Search Results - Report Page - ISRAEL
EMERGENCY ALLIANCE and probably at other web locations as well.

Richard Silverstein states:

[Rachel Neuwirth] sued me for libel in Los Angeles Superior Court
because I called her a "Kahanist swine." Her claim was that this was
the same as claiming she was a Jewish terrorist since Kahane Chai,
Meir Kahane's Israeli political party, is designated by the U.S.
Treasury Department as a terrorist organization.

Neuwirth used to correspond with my wife Karin until I told Karin that
the discussion was pointless mostly because I had exactly the same
impression of Neuwirth as Richard Silverstein has.

I am not sure what the description of her as "conversant with Arabic"
really means. During the exchange of emails, I was not impressed by
Neuwirth's command of Arabic, and I am the first to admit that my
Arabic is rather poor.

Even though Silverstein hopes Neuwirth will have to dip into her
savings to pay both his and her legal expenses, I doubt that Neuwirth
will bear the cost of this particular legal escapade. Israel advocacy
organizations have adopted an old tactic of lawsuits and threats of
lawsuits both to silence critics of Zionism, the State of Israel and
the Israel Lobby and also to disenfranchise Muslim and Arab Americans.
These organizations and their financial backers are providing the
funding for lawsuits by people like James Policastro in Boston and
probably by people like Rachel Neuwirth in LA.

My wife discusses the Policastro lawsuit in Ethnic Ashkenazim Against
Zionist Israel: A Mosque Rises in Boston and in Ethnic Ashkenazim
Against Zionist Israel: Emails show pro-Israel anti-Mosque Campaign in
Boston. In the defamation and conspiracy lawsuit that the Islamic
Society of Boston (ISB) filed in response to the Policastro lawsuit,
Floyd Abrams, who was the high-priced attorney for several very
wealthy individual defendants, filed a motion for dismissal of the ISB
complaint under the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP statute. The court
rejected this motion.

Almontaser Must Rescind False and Defamatory Accusations « Stop The
Madrassa: Protecting Our Public Schools from Islamist Cur.. provides a
NY example of a threat of yet another frivolous legal action but this
time against former principal Debbie al-Montaser for accusing the
Stop-the-Madrassa Community Coalition of stalking her as part of the
campaign against the Khalil Gibran International Academy of NY City.

As far as I can tell from published news reports, Stop-the-Madrassa
has been stalking her in the commonly accepted popular usage if not in
the legal sense just as I have been stalked on the Internet (including
in Richard Silverstein's public forum) ever since I had a change of
heart about the conflict over Palestine even if I only know of two
cases where Israel Advocacy groups actually had someone follow me
around Boston. Such behavior is nothing new for Jewish organizations.
The ADL has a long history of invasion of privacy and defamation.

In my article Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel: Updating "The
AJC attacks", I give a reference to the German Jewish use of lawsuits
against groups and individuals believed to be enemies of German Jews.

The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Imperial
Germany by R. S. Levy describes in detail how German Jewish advocacy
organizations like the Zentralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen
Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith) used
the legal system

* to force perceived enemies into bankruptcy,
* to attack members of the academic community believed unfriendly,
* to ban books or
* to force publishers to change offending passages.

Like Rosenfeld and Reinharz, Levy often tends to conflate possibly
legitimate criticism with anti-Semitism.

Likewise Rachel Neuwirth conflates a reasonable if heated description
of her politics with an accusation that she is a terrorist. So far the
record of this type of lawsuit has not shown as much success in the
USA as such lawsuits did in Wilhelmian Germany, but organizations like
the David Project, the AJCongress, the AJCommittee, the ADL, and
StandWithUs, which are just as likely to engage in defamation* as to
sue for defamation, are nothing if not well funded, stubborn and
tenacious.

* See Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel: Zionism, Penisism, and
Joseph Massad. eaazi.blogspot.com

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